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The Edmonton Indy cars have stopped running, but the bills keep mounting after Northlands asked Thursday for another $697,000 to cover losses on the defunct race. The money is needed to pay for acquisition costs incurred when Northlands took over operation of the event in 2008, city chief financial officer Lorna Rosen said.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — If two practices are any indication, Danica Patrick is a solid candidate to win the pole for the Daytona 500. Patrick turned the fastest lap Saturday in a pair of practice sessions focused solely on qualifying for the Daytona 500. She went 196.220 m.p.h. around Daytona International Speedway in the second practice session and said she’s eyeing the top starting spot in “The Great American Race.”

Katherine Legge on Saturday disputed former teammate Sebastien Bourdais’ version of her termination from Dragon Racing, saying Bourdais’ claim that she tested poorly at Fontana is a “complete and utter fabrication.” Legge told The Associated Press she has not been in a race car since the IndyCar season finale at Fontana in September — a direct contradiction of what Bourdais contends.

Local corporate sponsorship could be the lifeblood of the Edmonton Indy if it is to survive beyond the 2013 race. Finding that money can be tough. This year’s race, like that in 2011, failed to attract a title sponsorship.

The Edmonton Indy race remains popular with the public, was an artistic success Sunday, start to finish, and will return in 2013, the final year of its three-year contract with the City of Edmonton and the IZOD IndyCar Series. But Octane Motorsports Events, the Montreal-based promoter, is seeking even more traction with the fans and especially the Edmonton corporate community to ensure the long-term survival of the event here.

They blew soap bubbles, handed out buckets of Double Bubble, gave away thousands of bottles of water, passed out coupons and cheered their sudsmobile on to a reasonably good finish Sunday in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series. All in all, it was quite a weekend for the Bubbles Car Wash Racing Team.

Edmonton – James Hinchcliffe may be the virtual Mayor of Hinchtown, but Alex Tagliani took a major run at being electable in Edmonton with his strong performance Sunday at the Edmonton Indy race. Tagliani, from Lachenaie, Que., near Montreal, made a fairly impressive bid for something like a wire-to-wire victory, before fading to fifth place in the final 23 laps of the Edmonton stop on the IZOD IndyCar Series.

D.J. Kennington, a rather modest chap, said he was doing his darnedest to stay close to the road warriors. Don’t let his claims fool you. This NASCAR Canadian Tire Series driver is not just an oval specialist.

Not much has slowed down Ryan Hunter-Reay this season. The IZOD IndyCar Series leader bolted from seventh place to first in the drivers championship standings in the short course of three races. Then he raced up from 25th place — which is where he sat after an early practice run at Edmonton’s City Centre Airport track — all the way to the top of the qualifying results on Saturday.

Carlos Munoz, a rookie driver in the Firestone Indy Lights series, admitted that perhaps he had been driving a tad bit too slow as he made his way down pit lane. According to challenger Sebastian Saavedra, he was about 10 miles per hour too slow.

Canada’s Alex Tagliani is mighty proud to drive a race car for the Team Barracuda-BHA team, even though that outfit was none too predatory to start the 2012 IndyCar season. Indeed, through the first four races this season, Tagliani and Barracuda were dead in the water, plain and simple.

The lone woman to work on a pit crew on the IndyCar circuit, Anna Chatten was nearly run over two years ago during a practice session before a race in Ohio. “When a car is coming into the pits, you have about a two-second window — and that’s pretty optimistic — to decide whether the car is going to clear you or not,” Chatten said Saturday after helping install a new Chevy engine for driver JR Hildebrand’s Panther Racing Team.

Maybe it was only right that Helio Castroneves would return to the top of the results sheet in Edmonton, given that he’s been on the podium here in three of his four IZOD IndyCar races at the City Centre Airport track.

Minor mishaps will happen on the track, just as they do on the road, but IndyCar Series leader Ryan Hunter-Reay definitely didn’t want anyone thinking he would resort to obscene gestures during his day at the office.

Before the designers went to work building a new car for the IZOD IndyCar Series they looked no further than Justin Wilson, the tallest of the drivers at six-foot-three. “Six-three, and a half,” Wilson added.

The IZOD IndyCar Series for 2012 consists of 15 races — two in Canada, one in Brazil and 12 in the United States. Track venues and configurations range from temporary tracks on airports, as in Edmonton, to city streets to road circuits and ovals, including the famous Indianapolis Brickyard.

Takuma Sato sheepishly confessed that he did drive in from the Edmonton International Airport on Wednesday, but that wasn’t why he was late for a civic kickoff for the Edmonton Indy. He also vowed he’ll be much faster on the race track than he was on city streets.

Consistency had long been linked to Helio Castroneves, the Brazilian veteran who until last season, had never finished lower than sixth in the standings. But in 2011 he did not win one race, which is particularly noteworthy given that he had won at least one race in each of his previous 11 seasons with Penske. By season’s end, Castroneves was parked in 11th place in the IndyCar drivers’ standings.

EDMONTON - Canadian driver Alex Tagliani has long wrestled with a nut allergy so severe that earlier this season, he even reacted to a hotel shampoo that contained sweet almond oil. Needless to say, he’s diligent about what he eats — something Quebec’s La Petite Bretonne bakery embraced. They are not only whipping up his new Tag on the Go packaged cookies, they went so far as to add an extension to their factory that does not produce anything with nuts.

After 10 races in IndyCar’s new car, drivers aren’t surprised by the rapid shifts in the standings — something the series hasn’t seen for some time. Every car is now equipped with a new Dallara chassis, while Honda, Chevrolet and Lotus are supplying the 2.5-litre, turbocharged V6 engines.

After a one-year hiatus, the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series is rolling back into Edmonton, and Andrew Ranger, for one, can’t wait to take his stock car out for a spin around the airport track. The circuit underwent a significant revamp prior to 2011.

The season is speeding by and Ryan Briscoe is still trying to find some traction, which is why he was particularly frustrated after the Toronto Indy. Three laps from the finish of the July 8 race, Briscoe and Dario Franchitti got tangled up in turn three, dropping Briscoe into 18th spot. He had been looking at a top 10 result before the collision.

For Indy Lights racer David Ostella, the race track is no place for mom. Now in his second season on the circuit that’s the last step on the way to North America’s top open-wheel racing circuit, IndyCar, the Maple, Ont., product and Team Moore Racing driver has always put family first, with one minor exception.